Business as Usual
by Spiga
Summary: Derek pays Kate a visit. Things heat up rather quickly.


It occurs to me that I haven't posted anything in the Teen Wolf section proper. And as I feel there are a criminal lack of Kate fics, I figured I'd address this issue with this little fic I cooked up in my downtime. You know, when I should have been focusing on Dogs of War. Lol. Posted completely unedited and in its original format of suck.

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><p>The waxing gibbous moon hung in the clouds, somewhere a wolf howled. It sure as hell wasn't a normal one. Kate threw her pencil onto the desk and slammed the old book shut. Leaning back into her chair Kate ran her fingers through her hair, knowing that her search was pointless. All the old texts said the same thing. Everything in the family achieves led her to the same undeniable truth. In the archives of other hunter families she knew she would find the same answer. No cure. None. No cure. Those two little words danced around the inside of her skull. Poked and skewered her brain, taunting her.<p>

The bandage at her throat suddenly felt tight, constricting. She reached up and tugged at it wincing as she did.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to shout in frustration. Her mouth twisted into a furious sneer and she opened it as if to say something, hoping that somehow her shredded vocal cords had repaired themselves. All that issued was a frustrated, strangled gasp. Just as well, maybe it would have been worse if they had because that would just be confirmation of her greatest fear. Of her family's greatest fear. Had Chris told their father and the other elders? Probably not, if her father even _suspected _she had been infected he would have killed her himself. No hesitation, no questioning. Maybe he would have once, but Kate had to face facts. Paranoid and increasingly violent, the Argent patriarch had gone bug fuck crazy after years of hunting werewolves.

Just like she had. Though she had managed it in a fraction of the time but then again she was always the overachiever. Kate smiled, maybe a little crazily, and began to laugh the bitter laugh of a woman who was starting to unravel. The sounds caught in her throat and she coughed. A sob built up in her chest but she squashed it down, swallowed hard and looked a herself in the mirror.

Her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, but not yellow or gold. Not yet. Ears not yet pointed. Teeth hadn't yet sprouted into fangs. Her nails-_no_.

She held them up to the light, inspecting them.

Were they longer than they had been before? As in noticeably longer than they had been just a few hours ago when she had gone through the exact same ritual she had been going through since waking up in the hospital room with a bandage over her savaged throat?

No. No. _Nononononononono_-

She got up and raced to the window, throwing it open. The intensity of the smells hit her like a physical blow. Dogs and cats, humans and cars and food and…and…

Another howl split the night this one was deeper, almost demonic. It was answered by another, this one lighter and more naturally lupine. The beta finally answering the alpha. It sounded angry, the younger werewolf. Annoyed.

Scott was still mad at Derek.

She knew that last smell somehow. Even though she had never really been able to identify it before. How many nights had she curled up in bed with him breathing in that smell? How many times had she arrived in one of his and thatlittle bitch sister's drank hidey holes to find that scent clinging to whatever possessions they had been forced the leave behind? She's tracked them all across North America, leaving a trail of mutilated werewolf corpses in her wake. Killing their friends and family. It didn't matter if they had a treaty with the Hunters. It didn't matter if they had never harmed another living soul. She had just killed and killed and killed. Men, women, children it didn't matter. The bitten and the born alike. Peace with the elders? It didn't matter, nothing did. Her father had practically told her she had free reign, he'd cover up any deaths that would be considered inappropriate by his peers. Occasionally she'd be called by her father to take care of a werewolf who had a treaty with them yet was becoming to powerful. To much of a threat. But in the end there was only one prey that would satisfy her bloodlust and she had always returned to that hunt above all others.

The Hales had only been the first of many. Her initiation into different form of werewolf hunting.

After so long, Kate wasn't even a person anymore. Now she was a weapon. She paid no heed to any law but her father's. There was no thought of right and wrong, she had long ago burned the little voice in the back of her mind that had once said _"This is wrong. I must stop now. This is wrong. I am hunting the wrong prey. This is wrong. I am hurting innocent people." _she had not questioned herself since the day she had burned those people alive and shot any wolf who escaped. If she had ever been capable of coming back to some semblance of peace after doing what she did her father had seen that it was forever stamped out. Her father, who had put himself above the law of the other hunters. Father's Law was simple and absolute. Separate from The Code, more straight forward free of the vagaries and moral grey areas the other hunters concerned themselves with. _All werewolves must die. _

Kate reached up to the bandaged wound at her throat. It began to itch furiously.

_All werewolves must die._

Tears, desperate and terrified tears, began to well up in her eyes. She wiped them away. She took a seething, angry breath through clenched teeth. She sat there for a few minutes, alternating between rage and fear and sorrow and shame. Kate looked over at the handgun on her nightstand. Silver jacketed. Wolfsbane core. One little bullet to the brainpan and it'd all be over. If her family came into the room to find the brains splattered all over the far wall were glowing with a sickly purple glow and smoking like they'd been cooked they'd know she _had _been cursed by Peter Hale's claws that night when he had meant to tear her throat out. It was certainly one way to be sure.

Something inside her snapped. She wasn't sure if it was mental or physical.

Kate suddenly smiled through the tears streaking her face, because no, she wasn't infected. She wasn't going to become like them. She was just _imagining _that her senses were heightened. She'd worked herself up into such a state worrying about it that she was tricking her brain into believing it was real. Like those stupid women who wanted to believe so hard that they were pregnant they actually started to get fat and began to leak milk. It wouldn't be the first time she had hallucinated in the height of emotional stress.

After all, how many college boys had woken up to her putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger because in her fevered mind she had thought they were Derek? Human college boys. Normal.

She had disposed of those herself. She didn't want daddy to find out. After the first time she'd killed a human her father had said she wouldn't clean up the others. The werewolves, but not the humans. Not the innocents. Not the ones she killed in fits of rabid rage. Her father had known his daughter was coming undone, but as long as she carried out his orders without question and she cleaned up the mess he would look the other way.

No, no. She was still human. She wasn't a werewolf. Not a werewolf. _Not _a werewolf.

This was it then, the final screw was coming loose. They'd _all _known this was coming, even she had admitted it to herself. Her father had to have known. Her brother must have suspected. The way the other hunters all avoided her. The look of total terror in the eyes of the werewolves who realized just who she was. Yes, this was it. She had finally become what all the others had always said in whispers behind her back when they thought she couldn't hear them. She was a psychopath, a vicious animal. Oh, she always had been. She'd seen that long before now but now she realized that she couldn't even stop herself anymore. There was no going back now, she had spent six years dancing along the thin line between sanity and madness but now she couldn't do it anymore. She officially had a one way ticket to a padded cell and a straight jacket.

It might be nice actually, in the mental asylum. Peaceful. She'd do arts and crafts and maybe Allison would visit on the weekends. And if any of the other patients tried to mess with her she'd cut them open with a sharpened spork and tap dance on their entrails.

She was almost looking forward to it. Both the Arts and Crafts and the upcoming spork eviscerations.

Somewhere in the distance, Derek howled again. Somehow that howl…_tugged _at a part of her. It was the only way to explain it, like that howl was a fishing line hooked in some part of her soul and it was being yanked on. Her head hurt, her eyes began to sting. Her gums and her bones felt sore. Her stomach heaved, its contents rebelled and she brought up her hands to her mouth to try and keep herself from vomiting. A fourth howl arose then like a siren in the night. Was it closer than before or was she just imagining it? The alpha calling to its beta…

Kate slammed the window shut with such force that it shattered. She turned and sprang from the room, faster than she had ever moved before, and lurched into the darkened hallway. Silence reigned in the house. She was alone, the rest of the family was out. Ostensibly they were going out to eat, knowing that Kate was still struggling with swallowing solid food. At least that's what they told her. She knew they were just trying to get away from her, just trying to keep Allison away from her.

A fifth howl, definitely closer.

Something inside her wanted to howl back.

Kate leaned against the wall, because all of a sudden the hallway seemed to be at an angle. Hell that was nothing, her entire world was turning on its head. The hallway was just being lazy. Lazy, lazy hallway. She suddenly wondered if she could kill herself if she beat her head hard enough against the wall. Maybe the floor was a better option…and just like that, she realized she wasn't alone in the house.

"I called." from behind her. Of course. He always enjoyed taking her from behind.

She turned to see the form shrouded in shadows, only revealed in silhouette from the light of her bedroom and the light outside. All except the eyes, the glowing red eyes that blazed at her with a hatred that made something inside her whimper like a kicked dog. The other part of her, the human who hated him and all his kind almost as much, sneered up at him with equal loathing.

"I called." he said again. Slowly, evenly. His calm, flat voice didn't match up with the hate in those red eyes. The rage. "You didn't answer." An echo of a conversation had long ago, when she had begun to suspect.

One hand balled into a fist, and she swung at his jaw.

A clawed hand caught hers. Not his though, she turned her head slightly to see something move from the shadows beside the small end table. Golden eyes glowing in the dark. Scott? That sneaky little fucker! The clawed hand squeezed, and she cried out as the bones in her hand cracked, the owner of the taloned werewolf hand moved out of the alpha's shadow, into the dim light.

Jackson snarled, golden eyes glowing duly, mutton chops hanging in dirty tangles beneath his jaw. The beta bared sharp teeth at her, long agile tongue slipping past them to lick his lips. Derek loomed above him, his face moving into light as well. He looked a bit scruffier than when she had seen him last, his eyes glowing red. The expression on his face was some indescribable mix of triumph and heartbreak. Jackson reached out with his other hand, claws flexing for her throat. He never saw the staggering blow to his leg, it was a clumsy strike. It never would have worked on a werewolf before.

But now Kate's kick almost floored him, and as she stumbled her pulled her down with him. She twisted her hand out of his grasp and slammed a fist into his temple, the beta werewolf cried out in shock as he sank to his knees. He never expected a _human _to be able to hurt him, as a matter of fact a human _shouldn't _have been able to hurt him.

The wound beneath her bandage itched. Her eyes began to burn.

Kate backed up, dropping into a fighting stance as she went. Jackson was on his feet in a second, snarling and pulling back both clawed hands to swipe across her torso, a move that would have gutted her.

"Jackson, that's enough." Derek admonished. The beta ignored his maker, took a step forward. "_**Jackson**_!" Derek roared, literally _roared_. The beta paused and glanced over his shoulder.

"I said enough."

Jackson looked back at Kate, snarled and backed up until he had returned to his position at his alpha's side. Kate was sure that Derek mentally added 'good boy'.

"Jackson, go wait outside." Derek said, exasperated with his beta wolf. Jackson looked up at him as if he was about to protest but a single glare from Derek silence him. Casting another glare at Kate, Jackson melted back into the shadows, retreating back the way he came. Derek smiled smugly as the other werewolf obeyed his command. He was _loving _this, and why shouldn't he? He was living the dream.

Kate gave Derek a bitter, mocking smile of her own as his gaze settled back on her. She opened her mouth to taunt him, to mock him. To belittle him and his entire monstrous family. To _hurt _him. To see the raw pain in his eyes.

The words bubbled up and failed in her ruined throat. She gurgled, coughed. Derek let out a short, amused chuckle. Kate sneered up at him, hands balled into fists. It was her turn to show him pain in her eyes. Helplessness and desperation. He knew what she knew and he must have known how she was going to be handling it. For a moment, a tiny fleeting moment Derek's expression softened into something resembling pity. Kate shoved him, _hard,_ and to her surprise and maybe his own he actually stumbled back a half step. Jackson let out a roar somewhere in the depths of the house and Kate bolted. She ran into her bedroom, slammed the door shut and locked it. She dashed for her gun, picked it up and turned in one swift motion. She waited patiently for the door to implode and one or both werewolves to come barreling in after her.

Instead, Derek just…knocked.

Well, a series of knocks.

It was the first few bars of the Mexican Hat Dance music. And Kate let out a small sob as memories of a time long gone surfaced for the first time on years. Really, _truly _surfaced. Standing in that room fearing for her life she smelled the summer air that night she met him, tasted the food they used to share. Felt his skin against hers. That was _their _knock. Their secret knock. _'Is it okay to come in? Is it safe? Are your parents gone?' _It had been her idea, well his idea for the all clear knock. She had chosen what knock they would use. She had thought it had been funny at the time, now it just seemed kind of stupid. Of course she had been stupid back then.

For a moment she just stood there, frozen. Her brain caught in a loop, unsure what to do.

He knocked again. _'All clear? Can I come in? Wanna fuck?' _

She wasn't sure what she was doing as she lowered the gun walked over to her door and answered the knock, completing the song. Answering him.

'_Yes.'_

Was it the younger woman, dumb and in love with a kid she knew was a monster? Was it the beta werewolf trying to please its alpha? Was it the sick, twisted wretch she had become just not wanting to be alone anymore?

The door exploded off its hinges, knocking her back. Her gun went sliding across the floor. Derek stormed the room, his face a twisted approximation of his beta form. Some new alphas did that, it was a matter of familiarity. Her former lover looked down at her and roared, jaws widening to an inhuman degree and face appearing to _bulge_ horrifically as he did so. The beast struggling to surface. He kept some level of control over his form however, for the moment anyway.

The world turned shades of violet, Kate let out a hissing breath.

Her eyes flared gold, an inhuman growl leaked from her jaws. Mangled by shredded vocal cords but still ragged and vicious. Derek loomed over her, clawed hand flexing as if already tearing into her flesh. She scrambled away from him, crab crawling backwards as he advanced on her. For the first time _ever_, Derek had her at his mercy. She could see the fires that had consumed the Hale house reflected in his eyes. There was a promise of vengeance in his bone cracking growl as he kept pace with her prone retreat. She kicked at him but he batted her foot away. He exploded into a blur of motion, reaching down and grabbing her by the shoulders. Before she had a chance to react he had hauled her to her feet and thrown her onto the bed. As she bounced on the bed she saw him shrug off his leather jacket, eyeing her intently. Something cold and clammy grasped her heart. The sudden realization bringing an unexpected tide of fear with it. No, he wasn't going to…_he _would _never_…

Derek turned away and tossed his jacket onto the chair. Rolling his neck as he did so. When he turned to look at her his face was human, except for the eyes. His lip curled a bit, to reveal his teeth remained sharpened fangs. She slid back onto the bed, inching toward the pillows as he watched her. She had a silver knife hidden in her pillow case. Maybe she did deserve to die for what she did, but if he tried any of _that _shit with her she would cut his little werewolf pecker off. Jackson's too.

"Get up." He sneered in disgust.

Kate froze in sudden confusion as she considered the implication of his words. He wanted her on her feet, not prone. Not in a position of vulnerability. Why?

"Get up." Derek said again as he reached over and yanked on one of her legs, half dragging her off the bed. She jumped to her feet and then realized that her gun was laying just two feet away from her. She could drop, roll, pick it up and empty it into Derek's heart in one swift motion.

Derek's eyes fell on the gun, he turned to look down at it, not even bothering to hide that he saw it.

"You don't look good." Derek said, eyes snapping back to her. "Have you been eating?"

Kate narrowed her eyes and backed away. She knew he was playing with her, she just didn't know what game.

"You need your strength." he said, mocking her.

Kate's fingers twitched.

"I know you haven't been sleeping."

Kate's fingers twitched, her muscles tensed. He knew about the gun. She knew about the gun. They both knew she was about to make her move for it. It was only a matter of when. Kate was fast, but Derek was faster.

"You really should be resting."

Damned if she did.

"I'm serious." he was enjoying this, just like she had enjoyed taunting him.

Damn if she didn't.

"It could kill you, you know that right? The first change. Your insides could tear themselves to pieces, you'd bleed internally and you wouldn't be able to heal correctly."

Kate tossed herself onto the bed, not going for the gun but the knife. Derek snarled as she tore the pillow open and reached inside, pulling the silver plated blade free and then turning. She brought the knife back and lunged off the bed, openly telegraphing her attack and not caring one bit. She was a mindless thing, an animal. She always had been.

Now she always would be.

The silver sang through the air, Derek cried out in shock as it burned through his flesh and split one of those godly biceps of his right down the middle as she sawed through his skin and muscle. The smell of dying werewolf flesh, sizzling by silver or rotting by wolfsbane clogged her nostrils. It used to bring her such comfort, now it just made her gag. All the same she pulled the knife back, aimed another strike at his throat, hoping to inflict the same wound she had suffered. With his good hand he knocked the knife away and backhanded her with such force it spun her around. She stumbled, righted herself and swung for his face. Her fist connected with his right check with a sound of splintering bone and pulping flesh.

Hers.

She clutched at her hand, letting out a long gasp of pain and shock. Derek roared, the beast emerging from his face for a split second, his whole body shuddering slightly as his flesh trembled from within. Peter had done the same thing when he had been under attack but trying to keep from transforming. He was fighting it, fighting the change. Why? Why not just shift and tear her to shreds? Why not just kill her? She would have killed him. God, she wanted to kill him. She wanted to watch him die. Because maybe if she did, she'd finally be free of him. Because if he was dead, the last parts of her that loved him would die to and she could finally stop caring enough to hurt.

Derek rolled his torso, taking a step back from her. He threw back his head as he did so his skull expanding. His mouth swung open wide like a snake unhinging its jaws and his teeth exploded into massive saber fangs. He let out a sudden pained scram which dissolved into an agonized roar. His legs bent and twisted, veins pulsed beneath his skin, distending horrifically. There was a crackling sound of bones, the crunching of cartilage. His head snapped to the left, then to the right. He snapped forward, hunching over and allowing Kate to see his shoulder blades expanding and pushing out against his skin. Then he snapped back and as he did Kate saw that half of his face had retaken its human form, but the other half had mutated into the snarling lupine face of the Alpha. Derek gagged, spittle flying from his mouth as his throat began to swell against his shirt collar. Derek let out a pained grunt, followed by a whimper as the gash in his arm spat black blood, the muscle swelling. This went way beyond what Peter had been doing, this was like some kind of full blown transformation seizure. He doubled over, clutching at his abdomen as he did so. His flesh darkened, bubbled and rippled. As his bones gave a final prolonged crack like the splitting of some great tree Derek stood bolt upright, his features settling back into their beta form. Then with a shudder he became human. His eyes faded from red to blue and then back to their normal color. He panted, apparently staggered from the struggle against his own body. Was that normal? Was something going wrong with his transition? Was his body stabilizing after the leap from beta to alpha?

_Was he going to be okay?_

Derek glowered up at her, teeth bared. He was winded but she didn't know how vulnerable that actually made him. He took in two deep breaths to calm himself and then settled his focus back on her.

"Don't do that again." Derek warned. "I'm not sure I can control it next time." Kate looked up at him, looked him up and down, and then came to a decision. Comparing the boy she had once known to the man he had become. To the monster he had made himself into. She wondered how much of that she was responsible for. She wondered exactly what she had done to him. She had to admit, just what kind of psychological damage she had done to her little pet werewolf piqued her curiosity. Never mind, he could still be useful to her one last time.

She flew at him, fists flying for his face, even her broken one. He ducked under both blows and sidestepped her when she tried to kick him.

"Kate…" he said, almost exasperated.

She turned around and swung for her head again. He dodged the fist.

"Kate. _Stop_." he demanded.

She didn't listen to him, she never had anyway. She struck him in the chest, felt her knuckles split. The smell of her own blood assaulted his nostrils. She let out a frustrated moan and hit him again. Her mouth formed the words. Her throat couldn't produce anything but increasingly loud garbled nonsense. Derek caught her hands as she continued to rain blows on him, trying to make sense of what she was saying, trying to read her lips.

"_Kill me." _she demanded silently. _"Kill me."_

"Kate. What are you doing?" Derek sputtered, clutching both her arms as she struggled and thrashed in his grasp. "What-"

"_Kill me."_ she mouthed as tears began to streak down her face. _"Kill me, kill me!" _

"Kate, I-don't-_understand_!" he barked, struggling with her.

Oh God, he didn't know did he? Of course not, why would he? It's not like he came to visit her in the hospital.

He didn't know, he didn't know that the same claws that had given her the werewolf curse had also robbed her of her ability to form words. She tore her arms from his grasp, and screamed in his face.

Not sound came out, just a hoarse wheeze.

Derek's eyes widened in sudden realization. He reached up and tore the bandage off of her throat.

Nothing was there, not even a scar. Not even the tiniest hint there had ever been any kind of wound.

Kate pulled her lips back over her teeth, eyes once again flaring gold and leapt at him. He staggered back from her attack, and she lashed out at him. Unleashing her furry, her grief, her regret, her madness. She slammed her fists into his chest and face, clawed at his eyes trying to stop him from looking at her. All the while she mouthed those two little words, maybe they'd been circling in her brain since she had betrayed him and murdered his family. Maybe even longer. Derek reached up to touch her face, the ruined beast, this twisted mirror image of the Kate Argent he had known long ago. The woman who had made him fall in love with her.

It…_hurt _him, seeing her this way. He had wanted her dead, he had wanted to see her suffer and die for what she had done. That night in the Hale basement as she had tortured and taunted him he had wanted to do the same to her. He had known that if she had been turned, then it would have made her crazy with misery. For many werewolf hunters, being turned was considered a fate worse than death. He had been like a little boy on Christmas morning on the way over. He had barely been able to contain his excitement at the prospect of seeing her transform into the very thing she hated. At last, Kate would feel a _fraction _of the agony she had caused him.

But the prospect and the reality were very different. Derek found he took no pleasure in watching Kate Argent suffer.

Did that mean he was weak?

All the while, she mouthed and desperately tried to scream the words that had blazed across her brain since the moment she had awakened in that hospital bed, wounded but alive.

"_Kill me! Kill me! Oh God, Derek! If you ever loved me, kill me!" _

Derek shoved her away from him, and she shrank to her knees, unable to hold herself upright any longer. He turned away from her in disgust, trying to hide the onslaught of emotions that overcame him.

All the while Kate screamed, trying desperately to be heard by Derek. By anyone, but _especially _Derek. She reached for him, fingers clawing at air. Her eyes were wild and rabid, like the animal that had always hid inside. She screamed, but silently, forever silently. Derek showed her only his back, unable to even _look _at her anymore.

Kate Argent screamed like a trapped animal, crazed with fear and rage but no one could hear her. No one was even trying to hear her anymore.

In other words, business as usual.

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><p>Kate Argent was my second favorite character. The show won't be the same without her.<p> 


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